Somnium Noctis
by dancinglemur
Summary: G1. Ratchet had nightmares about losing patients, but the ones about the Twins were the worst. A dark Ratchet/Twins drabble.


Somnium Noctis) G1 A dark Ratchet/Twins drabble (title fails at latin)

**A/N:** If anyone reading this knows Latin and is offended by how horribly I probably slaughtered that attempt at a witty title (I couldn't think of anything creative in English, so I just turned it into Latin to at least attempt to make it sound interesting... There's no word for 'Nightmare' to my knowledge, so... 'Dreams of the Night?') I'm sorry. (It's so sad, I'm halfway through my second year of Latin and I STILL FAIL -headdesk-) Also, there's a bit at the beginning where I attempt to make sense of Cybertronian um, physiology? (Is that the right word?) So if it, too, is horribly wrong, please ignore it.

Lastly, this is rather dark little ficbit. You've been warned.

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Ratchet had nightmares about losing patients. He was sure all medics did.

Dreaming wasn't normal for Cybertronians – their processors never, under normal circumstances with healthy mechs, fabricated data to make them live events during recharge. But their systems did defrag during recharge, and occasionally that meant reviewing memory files. And sometimes something glitched, superimposing the faces of mechs he knew now over the dead and dying bodies of those he'd known and had not known before.

Over the vorns he'd lost Optimus, Jazz, Prowl, Irohnide, Wheeljack and many others to his night terrors. Sometimes they died on his operating tables. Sometimes they died splattered in the fluids of themselves and of others in a ditch on a busy battlefield. Sometimes they died in his arms. Sometimes something routine went horribly wrong – that was normally the one where something of Wheeljack's exploded in his face – and Ratchet either didn't get there in time to fix it, didn't have the supplies to fix it, or could only watch, horrified, as his friend's spark guttered and died in his hands.

The worst ones were the ones of the Twins. _His _twins.

The best ones of those was where he lost them both at once. To their suicidal Jet Judo or to a slagged-off Megatron or something else, it didn't matter. It ripped out his spark and stomped on the remains, yes, but that one was nowhere near as bad as when he lost one and not the other.

Sometimes Sideswipe was the one to die. Sunstreaker finally lost it – Sideswipe was really the only thing holding him to sanity, and without him, Sunstreaker stopped caring about anything else. He would claw his way out of the holding cell they always had to stuff him into when Sideswipe was injured (for the protection of others), mercilessly mowing down anyone and everyone in his path. He arrived at the medbay doors splattered in the fluids of his comrades, a crazed look in his optics. He shoved his way over to the table where Sideswipe's graying body lay, ripping out First Aid's throat with a spark-chilling nonchalance when the medic-in-training didn't move away from the red twin's body fast enough. The yellow half would curl around his twin, keening as he clutched the other's corpse to his chest so tightly that it looked like he was trying to meld their frames together. "Sides…Siders, no…" He moaned to himself, shaking so badly his plating was rattling. "Don't leave me, Siders, don't--please don't Sideswipe. You're not s'possed t'be the first one t'go, Siders…don't go, don't go, come back, Siders. Why'd they take you away from me, Siders? Why'd they take you away?"

Soon he talked himself into believing that the other Autobots had taken his brother away, and as soon as he could bring himself to part from his brother's corpse, he stumbled back out into the Ark with an eerie aura of not-quite-there deadness that unnerved anybot he came across long enough for him to eviscerate them. Officer, warrior, messenger, medic, grunt, he made no distinction in the frames that fell beneath his hands, and soon he was standing before Ratchet once more, his optics distant and not there, splattered in the life fluids of their friends and comrades.

"Why…" He whispered brokenly, mostly to himself. "Why, Ratch, why? Why is he gone, Ratch?" He sounded small and lost, like a sparkling, and Ratchet felt what was left of his spark after Sideswipe's death break. Without thinking, he stepped forwards and opened his arms. Sunstreaker stumbled towards him, stumbling and falling to his knees, crawling towards Ratchet to grip the medic's legs in an unconsciously painful grip. "Why is he gone, Ratchet? Where'd he go?" He sounded so small and lost that it broke Ratchet's spark. Sunstreaker's beautiful face, streaked with energon and coolant and Primus only knew what else, stared blankly up at him, the beautiful blue optics blank and mutedly confused. "Where-"

A shot rang out, ripping though Sunstreaker's back and out the front of his chest, completely destroying his spark chamber. His lips parted in a silent cry and he slipped sideways onto his face, dead, at Ratchet's feet.

The bot holding the gun was always faceless, and the owner of the voice he spoke with as he said, "I'm sorry, Ratchet, he was out of control. Dangerous. It was for his own good and our safety. It had to be done." always changed. Sometimes it was Optimus, sometimes Prowl, sometimes Jazz, sometimes Ironhide, sometimes some other. It didn't matter. It still killed him to watch it, to live it.

And sometimes it was Sunstreaker that they lost on the field. Sideswipe crouched over his brother's body, howling at and savaging anyone who came close and tried to take his brother away from him.

Eventually Ratchet was able to coax the distraught and lost red mech away from his brother's body, but Sideswipe was in a pained daze, his optics unfocused and babbling about how he really needed to get back to his brother – Sunstreaker had chipped his paint, you see, and was in a right foul mood, and Sideswipe needed to get back before he attacked somebody over some imagined or exaggerated slight.

Finally, though, they had to tell Sideswipe that his brother was gone. Gone. Dead. He couldn't be bitching and complaining about his paintjob because he was _dead. _

Sideswipe went into denial, first brokenly, softly, protesting and then screaming at them that they were wrong, that he brother was still alive, still there, right in the next room, couldn't they see?

He faded after that. He continued on under the delusion that Sunstreaker was still around, but inevitably he succumbed to a deep depression. His mind just… drifted away without its other half to keep it grounded.

Ratchet went to go visit him, he always did.

Sideswipe sat in his corner, clutching Sunstreaker's favorite polishing cloth to his chest, limply buffing out some imagined imperfection on his frame. He didn't recognize Ratchet, he never did, just stared off at nothing with a dead-inside look to his optics, mumbling disjointedly about something Sunstreaker had done to get stuffed in the brig this time. He was weak, listless, from lack of fuel, but he refused to eat or take a feed line. All Ratchet could do was watch helplessly as he drifted off to join his brother in the afterlife, his will to live gone with his twin's spark.

He didn't know which was worse, which one he hated more. All he knew was how he would wake up shaking, clicking like a crying sparkling, and all he could ever do afterwards was shiver in his lovers' arms, huddling into the red and gold bodies as he clutched them to himself tightly enough to scrape paint until his terror at losing them faded and they were eventually able to coax him back to peaceful recharge once more.

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Eh... review?


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